Bitter Fruit

1750-1830
Height: 5.7 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.72/1.60 cm
Stopper: glass; pearl finial; glass collar

Provenance:
Eric Young
Sotheby’s, London, 3 March 1987, lot 12

Published:
Kleiner 1987, no. 93
Galeries Lafayette 1990, p. 12, no. 1
Treasury 5, no.983

Exhibited:
Sydney L. Moss Ltd., London, October 1987
Galeries Lafayette, Paris, April 1990
Creditanstalt, Vienna, May-June 1993

 

Transparent pale ruby-red, pale yellow, emerald-green, and slightly milky glass, all suffused with air bubbles of various sizes, many elongated; with a flat lip and recessed flat, irregularly oval foot surrounded by a protruding, irregularly oval foot rim made up of elements of the design; carved as a single overlay with a continuous design of two butterflies flying around a leafy bitter-gourd vine with five gourds, a branch of which forms the naturalistic foot rim.

Alexander Whittaker